Official MLBlog of the Kansas City Royals front office.

Front Office Handoff

Blog Note – The Royals Caravan headed into east-central Kansas this week for a three-day, eight-city trip. Throughout the trip, Royals folks will be posting daily blogs from the road. This posting comes from Royals Vice President of Public Relations, Toby Cook. You can read about the Royals Caravan on the home page of royals.com. MLB.com writer **** Kaegel will report on caravan activities throughout January as well.

A handoff at the Hyatt. Day Two of our Kansas Winter Caravan ended in a downtown Wichita hotel Tuesday with Royals General Manager Dayton Moore giving a high-five to Assistant General Manager Dean Taylor and grabbing the car keys. Dean joins us for our final day as Dayton returned to Kauffman Stadium to take care of more off-season business. We have had a great trip so far and are already looking forward to our jaunts to Nebraska, Missouri, Arkansas and the Kansas City area later this month.

As you read from our blog Tuesday, the good folks at the K-State Athletic Department in Manhattan served as great hosts early in the trip. They let our players throw and workout at the school’s facilities early Tuesday morning before Mark Teahen, Shane Costa and Todd Wellemeyer went to give interviews at Royals Radio Network affiliate KJCK in Junction City. Next, we hit a Rotary luncheon at the Junction City Country Club where, once again, broadcaster Ryan Lefebvre emceed a Q&A session and managed to score with all but one or two jokes. Rotarians aren’t necessarily the easiest audience for comedy, but they sure seemed to love the Royals.

Our group boarded the tour bus early in the afternoon for a well-attended autograph session at Central Mall in Salina. Lora Grosshans’ parents came by to say hi. Lora’s our Senior Director of Public Relations, the main coordinator of the Winter Caravans and a native of nearby Minneapolis, Kan. She says this year’s Salina appearance matched years past; however that apparently wasn’t the case at Hutchinson Mall (Kan.). Hutchinson blew us out of the water with a line of fans that started at the food court and stretched until the shoe store. Of course, if you haven’t been to Hutch, this is no frame of reference. Suffice to say, it was an Opening Day-like line and the guys stayed well over our initial time limit to accommodate everyone.

Why not? There is no denying a renewed enthusiasm in a ball club that made some aggressive moves this off-season. Everyone along the trip so far wanted to give Dayton credit, which he refused to accept. That’s okay, though. Dean’s here now to do that for him!

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